The Social Network – film review

I just went to see The Social Network and fortunately it lived up to my expectations. Here’s a short review. Below this is the original trailer (which spawned lots of funny spoofs but I still thought was really good – and introduced me to the amazing Scala choir!)

The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)

It’s difficult to describe what this film is about. It’s part college drama, part court-room drama (without the court room), part biopic. It follows the first year in the life of Facebook, created in a Harvard dorm room and the wrangling over intellectual property rights that went with it.

The dialogue sparkles and crackles throughout and the whole film has a claustrophobic feel. Everything moves quickly and noisily and sometimes you want to shout out ‘turn it down!’ or ‘slow it down, I didn’t catch that’. The camera work is superb and the frame very rarely zooms out further than if you’re sitting next to the actors. This all adds to the effect – making you realise the relentless speed at which everything happened.

You don’t need to be a member of Facebook to understand the film. The film isn’t really about Facebook. It’s about Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook’s founder) – presenting him as a clever but socially incompetent young man thrown into an incredible situation at a speed that no-one would really be able to handle.

In short, it’s a good story about friends, brilliant minds, creativity, youth and money and the sometimes damaging cocktail that that combination can create.

It’s a film about which people may say ‘it defines a decade’ or ‘defines a generation’. I’m not sure it will ever have that sort of impact but it is a brilliantly scripted, beautifully filmed, well acted, gripping story. That’s enough for me to recommend it to you!